Luanne Grasset

[Kermit]

Name: Luanne Grasset
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
Hobbies and Interests: Art history, art theory, sketching, yoga

Appearance: Luanne stands at 5'7'', weighs 130 lbs, and is Caucasian, of predominantly French ancestry. She has straight dark brown hair, usually parted in the middle, reaching down to the small of her back. She has large, hooded dark brown eyes, a small, refined nose, and thin lips. Her face is somewhat oval-shaped, and is usually bordered by her hair. She has a medium-light skin tone, and often wears only a small amount of makeup. She has pierced ears, though she rarely wears earrings. Her manner of speech comes off as soft-spoken and deliberate, and she is usually uncomfortable or apathetic regarding situations in which she has to raise her voice.

She has a slight, skinny build, though recently she has gained some light muscle tone from doing yoga. She tends to dress relatively low-key, and trends towards long-sleeved tops and capris. On casting day, she was wearing a sleeveless white blouse, a pair of dark brown capris, and black loafers. On her right wrist, she also wore an amber-beaded bracelet.

Biography: Luanne was born in Miami on March 23rd, 2003, as the eldest daughter of Francis and Margaret Grasset. She has one sister, Noreen, two years her junior. The Grasset family is fairly well-off, with Francis working as a high-paid corporate lawyer, and Margaret currently living a somewhat decadent housewife lifestyle.

Luanne's early life passed by relatively uneventfully, with most parenting being taken care of by an attentive in-home nanny. During this time, Noreen and Luanne grew exceptionally close, as they were usually one another's only real social contact other than their nanny. Luanne's parents didn't see the need to send her to preschool, and so as she entered elementary school, she found the transition to a hectic social environment jarring, and she would tend to stick to the sidelines of any group activities. Eventually, this social anxiety would translate into an avoidance of most overt long-term social relationships. Her parents mostly dismissed this as her just being shy, and instead of directly addressing it, they responded by firing the nanny, with Margaret assuming general parenting duties. She chose not to interfere too much with Luanne, and encouraged Noreen (who was already quite gregarious) to be even more outgoing, bringing her on things like neighbourhood social excursions and shopping trips while Luanne was at school, too consumed by anxieties to really care about what her mom and sister were spending the day doing. As Noreen entered school, Luanne found herself spending most of her free time with her sister, often falling into a support role for the younger girl, who was usually up to some kind of shenanigans. She much preferred this to spending most of the day alone, and having Noreen around helped bring Luanne back to a sense of relative normalcy after the tumultuous period following the nanny's abrupt departure.

At age ten, Luanne's interest in the arts first started to blossom, when she found herself transfixed after stumbling upon a TV her mother had forgotten to turn off, playing a documentary about the Paris Salon of 1863 and the conflict between Academic artists and Impressionist artists. Though she had previously painted during art classes at school, she never enjoyed the actual process of painting, finding the act of slathering paint on a canvas to be overly physical and uncomfortably messy. However, after watching the documentary, she became decidedly fascinated by the mental processes behind art and its creation, and the way it has evolved through history. This interest was further compounded when, a year later, on a family vacation to Paris, she got to visit the Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne.

Upon Luanne's middle school graduation, her parents chose to send her to Mangrove Garden High School (on tuition), at the recommendation of a family friend whose children had attended. At first, she found the school's academically demanding environment to be physically and emotionally taxing; and at one point during freshman year, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, asked her parents if she could switch to a different school. Concerned by this turn in her mental health (though not enough to directly intervene themselves), they decided to send her to a therapist, who recommended that she find a creative emotional outlet as a way to cope. In response, Luanne asked her parents if they could buy her a sketchbook and a set of art pencils. She greatly preferred the feel of sketching compared to painting, and soon began spending much of her free time sitting outside looking for aesthetically distinctive people to sketch. Over time, she has branched out from sketching single-person portraits to also relatively complex scenes, though she still chooses to only use pencil and paper as a medium.

Academically, Luanne is an okay student. She excels in the arts and humanities, but gets below average marks in mathematics and the hard sciences, and overall falls into about the middle of the class rankings. She prefers to spend most lunchtimes sketching alone, rarely speaks up during class discussions and group work, and feels uncomfortable with self-advocating if she is struggling in class. She doesn't really have any close friendships with anyone other than her sister, and feels generally ambivalent as to this fact (though, recently, as she and her sister have grown apart, she's found a growing urge to try to break out from her shell). She finds her schoolmates tend to define her by her familial relationship with Noreen, who also attends Mangrove Garden on tuition and is quite well-known around the school. Prior to her sister's enrollment, Luanne had a very quiet reputation around school, and so has had to adjust to the attention occasionally brought on from being close to Noreen. After she finishes high school, she intends to major in art history at FSU, and wants to use university as an opportunity to start anew somewhere out of her sister's shadow.

Over the past few years, Francis's job has increasingly required him to spend long periods of time abroad, straining his relationship with the rest of the family. As he has grown more distant, so has Margaret, with her carrying on an affair in his absence (which Luanne is not aware of, though Noreen is). Additionally, Margaret has started leaning harder into the social aspects of upper-class life, often spending most days and some nights out on the town with her friends, leaving Luanne and Noreen to their own devices. Noreen has responded to this newfound freedom irresponsibly, earning a reputation among the younger grades at Mangrove Garden as somewhat of a promiscuous wild child, which has strained the previously close relationship she had with her sister. Noreen has also started occasionally throwing house parties, disrupting Luanne's sleep schedule and exacerbating issues. Luanne has picked up yoga and mindfulness meditation as a way to cope with the stress brought on by the family's troubles, and quite enjoys the calming effect it makes her feel. Recently, however, she's noticed that yoga hasn't been having as much an effect on her as it used to, and that she has started feeling emotionally numb, empty, and generally apathetic with increasing frequency. She still attends therapy, though her appointments aren't as regular as they used to be, and she has yet to broach her most recent emotional issues with her therapist as she believes they will be resolved once she moves out of home for university.

Luanne currently doesn't have a very close relationship with her father, with most of their interaction being over the phone. Recently, he bought her a Jaguar as a surprise gift. She intends to re-gift this to her sister once the latter learns to drive, as she already has a car which she finds satisfactory (a Honda Civic). Her relationship with her mother has been relatively antagonistic lately, after they got into an argument (a rarity for Luanne) caused by Margaret attempting to show off (and potentially sell) some of her daughter's sketches to an art dealer neighbour without prior permission.

Luanne disagrees with SOTF-TV morally, and is generally incredibly disturbed by its existence, but doesn't see it as a root cause of society's woes, believing it to be more of a symptom evidencing that present American society overall doesn't value the sanctity of human life. She has drawn numerous sketches regarding the subject, including one based on Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa.

Advantages: Luanne tends to be well-thought-out and cautious, and she usually tries to stay out of trouble. Her quiet outward demeanour may cause her to be seen as not particularly threatening, and may help her find allies.
Disadvantages: Luanne's demeanour may backfire, as it means she's unlikely to stand up for herself if she's directly threatened. Additionally, she has a tendency of struggling when put under pressure, which means she may not do well in most situations presented by SOTF-TV.

[MurderWeasel]

Howdy, Kermit! Luanne is looking pretty good, but she is DENIED pending a bit of expansion and elaboration.

Right now, it's pretty heavily implied Luanne is white but it's not entirely explicit; could we get her ethnicity directly stated?

Does Luanne have any piercings? Especially the fairly-ubiquitous-for-girls ear piercings?

Can we get Noreen's gender mentioned when she's introduced (perhaps as "sister" instead of "sibling")? Right now it only comes up at the very end of the bio and she's referred to with the neutral "they" throughout, and I thought Noreen might be nonbinary until right at the end.

Was Luanne born and raised in Miami?

Did Luanne's parents choose to skip preschool for her, and if so, why? It sounds like they had the means to send her. I'd also like to hear a bit about what they (and her elementary/middle schools) thought about her avoidance of prominence/spotlight—did anyone try to get to the root of it/help her? How does she feel about her own struggles with long-term relationships?

Given Luanne's distaste for the messier aspects of painting, has she ever considered branching into either digital art or (if that's too cold and technologically-driven) sculpting alongside her drawing?

It sounds like Luanne is a paying student rather than a scholarship one, but I'd like it to be made explicit one way or the other in the bit about her attending Mangrove Garden.

Did Luanne's time in therapy lead to any progress on or exploration of her other emotional struggles?

How does Luanne act around her peers and in class? Is she a willing participant, or does she have to be coaxed into speaking up? How does she do with group work? Does she sit with others at lunch, or does she try to find quiet places to herself? Where does she fall in the class rankings, roughly? ("Near the middle" is perfectly valid for this)

I'd like to get a few more details of Luanne's family life, too. Is Luanne aware of her mother's affair? Were she and Noreen closer when the latter first started attending Mangrove Garden (and is Noreen on scholarship or paid)? Can I maybe get one specific detail unique to Luanne's relationship with each of her parents? And maybe also a quick note on when the nanny stop playing into her life, and how she felt about that?

How has Luanne dealt with her growing feelings of unfulfillment? Is she still in therapy?

What are Luanne's feelings about SOTF overall, aside from her occasional use of it as inspiration for her art?

Can I hear a bit more about Luanne's lacking assertiveness in her bio? Has it caused her any trouble at school or with her family? Also, is she in some fashion notably more deficient in survival skills than the average urban Miami teenager? If not, that disadvantage should probably be cycled for something else; it's been mentioned that Luanne is prone to breakdowns under pressure, which could be a good avenue to approach.

Finally, all of Luanne's hobbies and interests center heavily around art until the past few years, and it sounds like she wasn't even actively creating art until high school. I don't necessarily need another interest added, but I'd like to hear a bit about what she was filling her free time with before.

Post when you've got that taken care of, and we'll give Luanne another look. Thanks!

[Kermit]

i cant believe you would destroy half my sandbox memory vignette multishot plans like this (edited!)

[MurderWeasel]

Hey again, Kermit! Luanne's almost there—just a couple more little tweaks.

How does/did Luanne feel about so often playing second fiddle to her sister, having social calls take place without her, etc.? Also, how did she feel about the departure of the nanny?

What was Luanne's reputation/situation with her peers like for the two years before Noreen arrived at Mangrove Garden?

Has Luanne actually broached her mounting struggles with her therapist, or has she kept them mostly to herself for some reason?

Post when you've got that taken care of, and we'll give Luanne another look. Thanks!

[Kermit]

[MurderWeasel]

APPROVED